Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

The Murik of Papua New Guinea conceptualize women as the source of nurture, generosity and love. Men have political power, but their claim to sustain and reproduce society requires them to appropriate the nurturant qualities of women. So they must, in some sense, model certain aspects of themselves after women. A "maternal schema" or "poetics" of the female body, which underlines Murik sociocultural patterns, expresses itself in a range of societal domains. These issues tie in with some of the major contemporary debates in the social sciences, including the relationship between ideas of male and female power.

Synopsis:

This was the first modern ethnography of the Murik, a relatively large and important community settled on the Sepik River estuary in Papua New Guinea.

Description:

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; Part I. Dialogics of the Maternal Schema and the Uterine Body: 2. A Predicament in space; 3. The maternal schema and the uterine body; 4. The heraldic body; 5. Who succeeded Ginau?; Part II. Dialogics of the Maternal Schema and the Cosmic Body of Man: 6. A body more carnal; 7. The sexuality and aggression of the cosmic body; Part III. Dialogics of the Maternal Schema in Social Control: 8. Conflict and reproduction of society; 9. Social control and law.

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